Scribecast: DeMint Says Obama Trying to ‘Run Out the Clock’ on Debt Talks

Lachlan Markay /
July 08, 2011

In a Thursday interview with Scribe, Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, claimed that President Obama has no real intention of striking a deal with Republicans on the debt ceiling. Rather, he said, the talks between congressional leaders and the White House have been efforts to “run out the clock up against his so-called deadline of August the second” in order to paint Republicans as “irresponsible.”

The president fully intends to wait it out until then, DeMint said, “so that he can have a crisis” – which of course smacks of former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s infamous prescription for reform-via-crisis.

DeMint also discussed other facets of the debt ceiling debate, including the Treasury Department’s plans for averting default in the event that all parties cannot come to an agreement, and the potential that the administration would invoke the 14th Amendment to bypass congressional action.

“The president has been very alarmist” on the debt limit issue, DeMint said. He reiterated that Republicans would “give the president some increase in the debt limit in return for permanent structural change, and that permanent change is a constitutional requirement that we have to balance our budget.”

DeMint also took a few minutes to discuss his newly released book, The Great American Awakening: Two Years that Changed America, Washington, and Me, which chronicles the rise of the Tea Party movement, and how it changed DeMint as a Senator and as a person.

While the book of course has effusive praise for the movement and for other Americans seeking to affect conservative change in Washington, “the whole point of The Great American Awakening,” DeMint said, “is to tell people we’re not finished yet, and that they can make a real difference in 2012.”